Hilary Hahn & Hauschka : Classical & Crazy

Hilary Hahn & Haushka on Echoes

We recently had classical violinist Hilary Hahn and German pianist Hauschka on Echoestalking about their collaboration, Silfra. It’s a work of ethereal atmospheres, frozen fragments and deep spaces redolent of the location where they recorded it, Iceland. They played live on the show and this past week we ran an interview with the two artists talking about their collaboration. You can hear the interview now as a a free iTunes Podcast.

Here’s a snippet from their interview which begins with Haushka explaining his prepared piano preparations.

Hauschka: There are chopsticks that I use for drum sounds, and there is an EBow that creates a sustained note. There is a cheap necklace from $1 shop that is very light, but it is the object that I like the most because it has a very nice harpsichord sound. And then there is a chicken egg on the lowest F on the piano that creates a kind of like off beat, like tambourine or shake on the note.

It’s called a prepared piano, a technique made famous by John Cage in the 1940s. With his objects muting the strings, creating odd vibrations, un-piano like overtones and acoustic glitches, Hauschka turns his instrument into one-man orchestra from Bizarro World. It’s an otherworldly and haunting sound that Hauschka makes and it’s just what Hilary Hahn was looking for.

Hilary Hahn: I was really trying to get away from the assumptions about violin because I think violin can do a lot of different things. I had tried preparing the violin because Hauschka prepares the piano, but I, I found in combination with the piano the violin’s preparations just faded to almost inaudible. And what I concluded was the best way to interact aurally was just to create these different sound worlds with what the violin can already do with just various techniques that I’ve learned over the years.

You can hear Hilary Hahn & Hauschka talking about their collaboration in a podcast of their interview up now on iTunes.